RadiumOne sweeps the board at 2016 IPA Media Owner Awards

RadiumOne took home four of the top prizes at this year’s IPA Media Owner Awards which celebrate the industry’s most innovative and effective companies and individuals within digital media. The glittering Awards ceremony took place this evening at Bloomsbury Ballroom (15 November).

16/11/2016

As well as scooping the prize for Best Media Owner, Radium One also took home Most Improved Media Owner, Most Improved Partner and the Rising Star Award.

In total 16 awards and 10 commendations were presented. Eight awards were submission-based, including Best Commercial Director and Best Technology. The additional eight awards were based on the results of the IPA’s Online Media Owner Survey (a combination of spring, autumn and year-on-year results), and include Best Media Owner and Best at Cross-Media.

Says Pete Robins, Chairman of Judges, IPA Digital Media Group Chairman and Co-Founder agenda21, “This fantastic set of winners are clearly leading the way in terms of excellence within digital media. These are the companies and individuals who provide the best levels of service and passion to their agencies and in turn help improve the online media owner landscape. Congratulations to all this year’s winners!”

View all the winners here and join the conversation on Twitter with #MOA16 and @The _IPA.

The IPA Online Media Owner Awards has teamed up once again with The Drum as official media partner.

Summaries of winning campaigns and individuals:

Best Unfeatured Media Owner

Winner: Immediate Media

Since forming nearly five years ago Immediate Media has been on a journey of transformation. They combine a thriving print business whilst also developing a great digital offering for consumers and advertisers. Its focus on products, trading, insight, partnerships and innovation sees them now positioned as one of the most exciting media owners in the UK, offering advertisers access to a massive, engaged audience across a range of platforms.

Best Cross-Media Campaign

Winner: Instagram for Land Rover and Facebook

A pioneering partnership between Instagram, Mindshare, and our OOH media owner and sponsorship partners, took the mechanics of Instagram out into other media channels for the first time, to create a unique Land Rover lens on winter, and encourage people to get outside and spread the #Hibernot message. Over 10,000 #Hibernot photos were shared on Instagram. 61% of 25-44s living in urban centres said they would consider Land Rover for their next vehicle purchase.

Best Online Campaign

Winner: Collective for Avios ‘Do More’

Avios members understand that their points are a currency that must be spent if they are to be of any value, but something was holding them back. Collective were challenged to show Avios collectors that they were ignoring a great opportunity. Success meant increasing Avios customer satisfaction and engagement, through driving bookings and providing opportunities for ‘time well spent’ with their loved ones. The digital brand activity put dynamic creativity, intelligent use of data and effective brand measurement at the heart of the solution. The campaign not only increased customer engagement and satisfaction, it also resulted in an increase in bookings and in people signing up to collect Avios.

Highly Commended: Channel 4, All 4 Launch Partner for O₂ and Havas

Channel 4 invited O₂ to become their first ever launch partner of their entire digital estate. In doing so they created the opportunity to become the first brand to offer their customers exclusive 48 hour premiere access to the entire catalogue of their favourite C4 shows such as Made in Chelsea, Gadget Man, Fresh Meat, Peep Show and many more, all on through one click on the Priority app.

For this, their first-ever digital campaign, SCS needed tangible output in the form of increasing shop visitors and brand awareness to prove the value of digital ads. The combination of location-based segmentation, rich-media creatives and a high-scale brand uplift survey tool enabled unique insight on SCS customers which could inform future activity across the media mix. Media iQ helped SCS drive users to its 97 stores with an impressive footfall lift of 57% and 25% uplift in awareness of the SCS brand.

Best Technology

Winner: Trinity Mirror, Pinpoint

In 2015 Trinity Mirror launched pinpoint in beta to create a smarter local advertising solution for its nationwide advertiser base. Pinpoint is an app-mediated, hyper-local mobile platform that intelligently targets smartphone users with location-based advertising. The system enables advertisers to send geotargeted mobile messages, previewed in sponsored push notification, to a network of opted-in users, aggregated across their universe of national and regional app titles. The network currently comprises 28 titles including national brands such as The Mirror and the Daily Record, and regional powerhouses such as the Manchester Evening News.

Highly Commended: Channel 4 for BSkyB (Sky Sports)

Data has been at the heart of the Channel 4 digital strategy for many years, and its viewer database has now reached well over 13m. They have connected with their viewers and developed a personal relationship through their digital service All 4, which means they understand their needs, motivations and interests. After extensive development, in 2015 they launched the first personalised VOD ad format in the market; Ad 4 You. The technology permits them to serve, at scale, video advertising personalised by a user’s name, location, personal interests, gender, age and even by factors including current weather conditions.

Fikret started his career in AdOps at the end of 2014 as a graduate to the team with no prior ops experience. From his background in computing systems and software engineering, he quickly established himself as the “go-to-guy” for all ad-tech related issues and became much more than a campaign manager. Fikret’s achievements in such a short space of time are outstanding. His contribution to the business is unique as he manages to juggle a sound understanding of commercial pressures whilst considering the technical capabilities of products. Asking people across the business how they would describe Fikret in one word they responded with: “irreplaceable” “vital” “productive” and “valuable”.

Highly Commended: Mary Clarke, Optimisation Manager, Collective

Since joining Collective as an intern, Mary quickly established a role for herself and was promoted to Optimisation Manager after only four months. Described by a colleague as an “AdOps rock”, she has successfully managed tens of millions of pounds worth of campaigns. Her personality has helped build partnerships with the sales team and external agency contacts by understanding business objectives and optimising accordingly – delivering improved performance and insight. Mary’s pro-activeness and willingness to help maintains Collective’s reputation for high levels of servicing and she achieves this in a manner which doesn’t shout for attention.

Despite only being with Collective for 15 months, Ali Al-Tabib has become a key player significantly enhancing the quality of data and research insights for briefs and campaigns. The energy he brings is infectious and in a busy working environment he has quickly demonstrated an ability to be reliable, knowledgeable and professional. He doesn’t provide stock answers to data targeting requests but instead liaises with data providers to create appropriate strategies for each individual client’s needs. Ali is always ahead of the game in anticipating what colleagues and clients might need, proactively delivering quality data that can drive business solutions.

Sales Newcomer of the Year

Winner: Raj Mahon, Account Manager, Media iQ

Utilising his strategic mindset and agency experience, Raj has delivered exceptional results for Media IQ and their agencies. As well as overdelivering on all revenue targets and driving 60% QoQ growth, he has been at the forefront of delivering new and exciting programmatic strategies that help to push the boundaries of what is possible in this medium. Internally, he has become an invaluable addition to his team, sharing his skills and knowledge to the benefit of the wider team.

Highly Commended: Simone Mercier, Account Manager, Spotify

Simone began her career in Toronto, Canada at AOL. Starting as an intern she quickly progressed to a Coordinator, then Account Executive followed by Account Manager before eventually deciding to cross the pond, joining Spotify in July 2015. Hired as the first UK CSM (Customer Service Manager) in the London office, her intelligence, enthusiasm and knowledge of the industry soon became apparent and she was quickly promoted six months later to Account Director where she is currently responsible for several key agencies including PHD, M2M, AMS, Rocket and Good Stuff Media where she is working on several clients including Warner Brothers, Twitter, Red Bull, Confused.com, Amazon Prime Video, Viacom and many more.

Highly Commended: Jack Wood, Account Manager, Twitter

Prior to being at Twitter, Jack spent three years helping to build a paid social team at iProspect. During this time, he won the prestigious Google Squared Next Generation Leader Award. His mission is to equip clients with his knowledge of performance advertising to enable them to leverage the power of Twitter’s ad palette. In his tenure, he has built rock-solid relationships with partners, including Apple, based on transparency and a common goal for innovation. Jack has driven substantial increased spends and innovative product adoption across his book-of-business, whilst making sure to share his successes with his wider team.

Rising Star of the Year

Winner: Isobel Langley, Senior Sales Manager, RadiumOne

Isobel Langley is a rising star of the UK media industry. Her agencies and her colleagues applaud her passion, dedication, commitment, professionalism and delivery for their clients. Her sales record and accomplishments in the last 12 months are exemplary achieving record revenue growth, a record number of new brands, regular innovation, industry involvement & sparkling testimonials

Highly Commended: Maxwell Jasper Brown, Group Head, Collective

Max, a media sales professional with experience across press, radio and TV, joined Collective in 2014 in his first role in digital brand. Over the course of two and a half years at Collective, Max has transformed a major part of the business from selling digital brand campaigns to forming true digital brand partnerships. This has been achieved through his infectious personality that delivers incredible relationships with his clients and colleagues. He has consistently achieved sales targets - netting £6.9m in new business since joining Collective and growing his accounts by 107% YOY 2015 vs 2014.

Highly Commended: Hunain Khan, Senior Account Manager, Yahoo!

Hunain has made a vast impact to the business, internally and externally in terms of both revenue uplift and relationship building. Hunain has grown the Publicis and Omnicom agencies patches and provided them with the knowledge and tools which has encouraged them to spend over $1 million on native activity in Q1, growth of over 635% year-on-year. Hunain is respected not only for his professional attributes, but for his dedication and infectious personality.

Commercial Director of the Year

Winner: Dan Durling, Agency Sales Director, Yahoo!

Dan began his media career in 1997 as a graduate planner at Chrysalis Radio. Over the next 14 years, Dan worked his way up to Account Director. In 2012, Dan’s career moved from radio to digital, where he became Account Group Lead at Yahoo. Throughout his time at Yahoo, Dan has achieved three promotions, with his most recent in 2016, securing the role of Agency Sales Director. Dan is respected and admired across the entire media industry.

Highly Commended: Sales Director UK, Rishi Chande, Captify

Rishi is a strategic, customer-centric Sales Director with the ability to lead through empowering people to always put clients first. He is a force to be reckoned with, driving growth, revenue and the expansion of Captify, one of the industry’s fastest growing ad tech companies.

Survey Winners

Best Media Owner

Winner: RadiumOne

In their second year on the IPA Online Media Owner survey, RadiumOne have set a new bar for success. They have shown great consistency across the spring and autumn 2016 survey results, placing fourth in spring before rising to the top spot in the autumn survey. They achieved a score in excess of 80% for each period.

Most Improved Media Owner

Winner: RadiumOne

RadiumOne showed improvement in overall performance in both the spring and autumn 2016 surveys, pushing their score from below 80% to over 80% in each period. Since spring 2015 RadiumOne have posted an improvement of 14%.

Best at Innovation

Winner: Collective

Having won the Best at Innovation award at last year’s Media Owner Awards, Collective have maintained their success. They were top of this category in the spring survey and held this position in the autumn survey to deservedly take this award.

Most Improved at Innovation

Winner: Dennis Publishing

A significant level of improvement in the autumn survey has handed the Most Improved at Innovation award to Dennis Publishing, making them one to watch should they continue this path in 2017.

Best Partner

Winner: Media iQ

Having won this category in 2015, Media iQ have maintained their hold on this coveted award despite strong competition. They were the only media owner to post an average score in excess of 80% for the year, with a particularly strong performance in the spring survey.

Most Improved Partner

Winner: Radium One

RadiumOne have achieved a strong double-digit improvement in this category relative to their posting in the spring survey. They were one of only two media owners to have achieved such an increase in this category and so are most deserved recipients of the Most Improved Partner award.

Most Improved at Cross-Media

Winner: Sky Digital Media

With an improvement of 19 percentage points over the past year, Sky Digital Media have clearly brought their ‘A’ game to the table. Their autumn 2016 score is now extremely competitive and continued improvement could take to the leadership of this category in the future.

Best at Cross-Media

Winner: Global Radio

A strong autumn survey posting has handed the Best at Cross-Media to Global Radio. Their autumn 2016 score was particularly impressive, relative to their competitors being some 9 percentage points in front of their nearest rival.